(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a self-adhesive wound suture plaster with an elastic carrier material.
(2) Description of Related Art
Wound suture plasters are used for closing or fixing skin lesions. They consist in general of a strip-shaped carrier material which is coated wholly or partially with an adhesive composition, and, when they are used, they are stuck across the wound in order to hold the edges of the wound together. The intended result is that, in contrast to stitched wound edges, hardly any visible scars remain after complete healing.
As carrier materials for such wound suture plasters, the most diverse woven fabrics, nonwovens or sheets have hitherto already been proposed or used. Some of these materials, on the one hand, may be adaptable and highly permeable to air and water vapour but are unyielding, such as, for example, according to German Utility Model No. 7,032,197, and some are, on the other hand, made to be elastic and very yielding during the wound healing process, such as, for example, according to European Published Application No. 28,452, European Published Application No. 230,373 and German Offenlegungsschrift No. 3,524,315.
Although these elastic wound closure strips of polyurethane sheet, embossed nonwoven or polymer material cut at an angle to the main stretching axis yield plastically during the healing process of a wound, which process is as a rule characterized by a more or less extensive swelling of the tissue due to oedema formation, and thus prevent damage to the tissue caused by undue compression, their tensioning force is too low to ensure closure of the wound in an optimum manner. After the swelling has subsided, an undesirably wide scar forms as a rule over the wound fissure region as a result of the plastic extension of these products.
It was the object of the invention to develop a wound suture plaster which completely adapts itself to the physiological healing process of a scar and, at any time during this process, ensures tension-free but firm cohesion of the edges of the wound.